On 3 October 2026 the candidates for Auxilio Judicial, Tramitación Procesal and Gestión Procesal sat their exam in a single call, under Order PJC/937/2026 published in the BOE on 7 September. If you are one of them, or you have just walked out of any other exam, this article is for next week and the eleven after it. It promises nothing about your result: it gives you a method to decide with data what you do now.
Week 0: rest and mark with the answer key, not from memory
Do not touch the syllabus for the first two days. Then, when the board publishes the provisional answer key on the convening body's website, mark your exam with it and with your call's formula, not with the feeling you had walking out. Feelings after a 100-question exam are noise.
To mark it you need three numbers: correct, wrong and blank. With those and your call's penalty divisor (one quarter in Justice, one third in State administration) you get the raw score. The formula and a calculator are in the penalty guide.
If you spot a question with two defensible answers or outside the syllabus, check in the call the deadline to challenge the provisional key and file the challenge through the channel it states. It is a right, not a complaint.
Weeks 1 and 2: diagnosis by topic
This is the difference between repeating the cycle and improving it. Classify every mistake in the exam under one of three causes:
- I had not studied it: the topic was outside your plan or you ran out of time.
- I had studied it and mixed it up: you knew the article but got a deadline, a body or an exception wrong.
- I knew it and left it blank or changed it: a strategy failure, not a knowledge failure.
Each cause has a different remedy. The first is fixed with planning; the second with spaced repetition on the specific article; the third by rehearsing the penalty in mock exams. If more than a third of your mistakes fall under the third cause, your problem is not the syllabus.
With the diagnosis done, sort the topics of your programme into three lists: mastered, weak and not studied. That list is your plan for the next ten weeks.
Deciding with data: continue, switch or stop
Before week 3, make an explicit decision. Three questions help:
- How far off was I? If your raw score is close to the published cut-offs of previous calls (as a reference, not a prediction), the next cycle is consolidation, not rebuilding.
- Is there a call in sight? In the State administration, the 2026 public employment offer (Royal Decree 387/2026) must be called before 31 December 2026; in 2025 the call came out on 22 December. Every Oposilab exam page shows the latest call and the forecast for the next one, with its source.
- Can I sustain the pace? If you studied 25 hours a week and cannot repeat it, plan with the real hours of the next cycle, not the previous one.
Switching exams within the same family (for example, from Auxilio Judicial to Tramitación Procesal) reuses much of the syllabus. Switching families is starting over, and must be treated as such.
Weeks 3 to 10: study cycle with spaced repetition
The most common mistake after an exam is re-reading the syllabus from topic 1. Replace linear reading with a cycle that starts from your mistakes:
Unstudied topics first
Spend weeks 3 to 5 on the topics from the not-studied list, reading the article and taking the topic test the same day. Every mistake goes into spaced repetition.
Weak topics with the article in front of you
In weeks 6 and 7, work the weak topics only with tests and with the literal article text in every correction. Do not re-read the whole topic: read the article you got wrong.
Daily spaced repetition
Every day, before studying anything new, clear the review cards that are due. With the SM-2 algorithm the daily volume settles at a few minutes.
One weekly mock exam with the real penalty
From week 8, take a weekly mock exam with your call’s structure and record correct, wrong and blank. Compare the curve week by week, not each mock exam in isolation.
Weeks 11 and 12: close the cycle with a measurement
In week 12, repeat the same kind of mock exam you took in week 8. If your raw score and your share of third-cause mistakes have improved, the cycle works: continue. If not, change the method before changing the exam. A twelve-week cycle with a measurement at the start and another at the end is worth more than six months of reading without data.
On Oposilab the cycle is already built: topic tests with the explanation and the article, spaced repetition fed by your mistakes, mock exams with the call's structure and a tutor that answers only from the syllabus. You cannot import the mistakes from the real exam, but you can from the first mock exam, and from there the system keeps track.
- How long does the board take to publish the answer key?
- It depends on the board and the call. Check the convening body’s website; in Justice it is published by the Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes in its selection processes section.
- Should I wait for the results before studying again?
- No. Mark with the answer key, rest a few days and start the diagnosis. Waiting for the final lists can mean weeks without studying.
- Is switching exams giving up?
- No. It is a strategic decision to be taken with data: score obtained, expected places, shared syllabus and real hours available.
- How many hours do I need for this plan?
- The plan adapts to the hours you have. What matters is the structure: diagnosis, unstudied topics, weak topics, daily review and weekly mock exams with a measurement at the start and the end.
